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Game of Thrones Creators Explain How Next Season Will Break One of Their Original Rules

This post contains mild spoilers for the next season of Game of Thrones.

Even if you haven’t read the books, you might have already heard that there is plenty in Queen Cersei’s Season-Five storyline of Game of Thrones to get excited about. But now we have one more reason. During an interview in Seville, Spain, show creators Dan Weiss and David Benioff confirmed the rumors that have been circulating for months. Yes, for the first time on Game of Thrones, there will be flashbacks. And, as we already know thanks to one actress’s very excited mom, those flashbacks will feature a young Cersei. Before we get into the ramifications of this revelation, here’s Weiss and Benioff on the original rules of the show and why they broke them:

Making the first season, we set a rule: No prophecies, dreams, or
flashbacks. We already failed the first two, and this season we broke
the third. So yes, this season will finally have flashbacks.

I can understand why the rules were initially put into place. The goal, as far as I understand it, was to make a fantasy television show that was as universally appealing as possible. I can see how the intricate prophetic mythology of the A Song of Ice and Fire books and the extensive, protracted dream sequences (ugh, Bran!) might be alienating to an audience unfamiliar with the fantasy genre. The reason why they got rid of the flashbacks (even after filming a few) is a little less clear. But back in 2012, Game of Throneswriter Bryan Cogman explained:

The principle reason for that is a logistical and budgetary one... We
already had the biggest cast in, maybe, TV history. Casting an entire
generation of players from twenty years prior would. . .We probably
wouldn’t have had a season one if we did that.

The other reason is, that's a perfect example of what works in a book
that doesn't work on TV. The book does brilliantly flash back through
memory, and through people telling stories of the past. If you were
just take those passages from the book and do them on screen, you
would be doing a flashback every five minutes!. .
.The relationship to the past, and the circumstances around the
rebellion will all be visited somehow on the show. How we're going to
do that, and the devices we're going to use, I don't even know yet.

But with the budgetary constraints of Season 1 a thing of the past, it looks like flashbacks are on the table again. The best part of this news is that not only will we get a young Cersei, but in embracing flashbacks, Game of Thrones has opened the door for departed characters to return. In the case of a Cersei flashback, I’m hoping we get a cameo from Charles Dance, who said last month that we hadn’t seen the last of Tywin Lannister. (Though he could easily have meant he’s coming back to play the corpse of Tywin.) We know that Cersei’s flashback will feature the fortune teller Maggy the Frog. So, that means we’ll get two rule breakers, prophecies and flashbacks, in one go. Why not make it part of a dream Cersei has and call it a hat trick?

But the increase in dreams, prophecies, and flashbacks not only allows characters to return (Sean Bean, please!), but also gives the writers the ability to pad the plot with rich backstory in order to let George R.R. Martin get at least one more book out before the show runs out of story. This won’t just be superfluous padding. In the case of the Cersei flashback, the Maggy the Frog prophecy (which appears in the fourth book, A Feast for Crows) will help explain both how Cersei wound up as hard and twisted as she is, and why she hates Margaery Tyrell so completely. In other words, it’s going to make her walk of shame all that much more shameful. I can’t wait.